Pre-suasion Flashcards
Older voices have recognized the wisdom of undertaking prior action to secure subsequent success.
In asserting the value of early planning, the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu declared, “Every battle is won before it is fought.”
The highest achievers spent more time crafting what they did and said before making a request.
They spent much of their time toiling in the fields of influence thinking about and engaging in cultivation—in ensuring that the situations they were facing had been pretreated and readied for growth. Of course, the best performers also considered and cared about what, specifically, they would be offering in those situations. But much more than their less effective colleagues, they didn’t rely on the legitimate merits of an offer to get it accepted; they recognized that the psychological frame in which an appeal is first placed can carry equal or even greater weight.
they did something that gave them a singular kind of persuasive traction:
before introducing their message, they arranged to make their audience sympathetic to it.”
an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication:
what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next
all mental activity arises as patterns of associations within a vast and intricate neural network,
and that influence attempts will be successful only to the extent that the associations they trigger are favorable to change
the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is often not the one that offers the most accurate or useful counsel;
instead, it is the one that has been elevated in attention (and thereby in privilege) at the moment of decision.”
“it comes down to this: in deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses;
for confirmations of the idea rather than for disconfirmations. It is easier to register the presence of something than its absence.
Do you consider yourself a helpful person?” Following brief reflection, nearly everyone answered yes. In that privileged moment—after subjects had confirmed privately and affirmed publicly their helpful natures—
the researchers pounced, requesting help with their survey. Now 77.3 percent volunteered.
thesis of this book: frequently the factor most likely to determine a person’s choice in a situation is not the one that counsels most wisely there;
it is one that has been elevated in attention (and, thereby, in privilege) at the time of the decision.
this nontraditional—channeled attention—approach, to get desired action it’s not necessary to alter a person’s beliefs or attitudes or experiences.
It’s not necessary to alter anything at all except what’s prominent in that person’s mind at the moment of decision. In our example of the new soft drink, it might be the fact that, in the past, he or she has been willing to look at new possibilities.
when asked the single-chute question of whether they fit this category, people nominate themselves almost invariably.
Such is the power of positive test strategy and the blinkered perspective it creates. The evidence shows that this process can significantly increase the percentage of individuals who brand themselves as adventurous or helpful or even unhappy
the guiding factor in a decision is often not the one that counsels most wisely;
it’s one that has recently been brought to mind. But why? The answer has to do with the ruthlessness of channeled attention, which not only promotes the now-focal aspect of the situation but also suppresses all competing aspects of it—even critically important ones
just as there is a price for paying attention, there is a charge for switching it: For about a half second during a shift of focus, we experience a mental dead spot, called an attentional blink,
when we can’t register the newly highlighted information consciously.
influence process:
whatever we can do to focus people on something—an idea, a person, an object—makes that thing seem more important to them than before.
a communicator who gets an audience to focus on
a key element of a message pre-loads it with importance.
The central tenet of agenda-setting theory is that the media rarely produce change directly, by presenting compelling evidence that sweeps an audience to new positions;
they are much more likely to persuade indirectly, by giving selected issues and facts better coverage than other issues and facts. It’s this coverage that leads audience members—by virtue of the greater attention they devote to certain topics—to decide that these are the most important to be taken into consideration when adopting a position
This sensible system of focusing our limited attentional resources on what does indeed possess special import has an imperfection, though:
we can be brought to the mistaken belief that something is important merely because we have been led by some irrelevant factor to give it our narrowed attention.
the persuader who artfully draws outsize attention to the most favorable feature of an offer“becomes a successful pre-suader.
That is, he or she becomes effective not just in a straightforward attention-based way—by arranging for audiences to consider that feature fully—but also by arranging for them to lend the feature exaggerated significance even before they have examined it
Any practice that pulls attention to an idea will be successful only when the idea has merit.
If the arguments and evidence supporting it are seen as meritless by an audience, directed attention to the bad idea won’t make it any more persuasive. If anything, the tactic might well backfire.
to receive the benefits of focused attention, the key is to keep the focus unitary.
merely engaging in a single-chute evaluation
can automatically cause people to value the focused-upon entity more and become more willing to support it financially.
First, a thorough analysis of all legitimate roads to success is time consuming, requiring potentially lengthy delays for identifying, vetting, and then mapping out each of the promising routes;
and highly placed decision makers didn’t get to their lofty positions by being known as bottlenecks inside their organizations.
Second, for any decision maker, a painstaking“comparative assessment of multiple options is difficult and stressful, akin to the juggler’s task of trying to keep several objects in the air all at once.
The resultant (and understandable) tendency is to avoid or abbreviate such an arduous process by selecting the first practicable candidate that presents itself.
the persuasive consequences of managing background information and inviting singular evaluation went unrecognized by individuals subjected to those procedures, too.
Through this cloaked influence, techniques designed merely to channel temporary attention can be particularly effective as pre-suasive devices.
directed attention gives focal elements a specific kind of initial weight in any deliberation
It gives them standing as causes,“which in turn gives them standing as answers to that most essential of human questions: Why?
become focal in attention;
and what is focal is seen to have causal properties—to have the ability to make events occur.
because what’s salient is deemed important and what’s focal is deemed causal,
a communicator who ushers audience members’ attention to selected facets of a message reaps a significant persuasive advantage: recipients’ receptivity to considering those facets prior to actually considering them.
very often the biggest challenge for a communicator is not in providing a meritorious case
but in convincing recipients to devote their limited time and energy to consider“ing its merits. Perceptions of issue importance and causality meet this challenge exquisitely.
In any situation, people are dramatically more likely to pay attention to and be influenced by
stimuli that fit the goal they have for that situation
What’s the persuasive alchemy that allows a communicator to trouble recipients deeply about the negative outcomes of their bad habits without pushing them to deny the problem in an attempt to control their now-heightened fears?
The communicator has only to add to the chilling message clear information about legitimate, available steps the recipients can take to change their health-threatening habits. In this way, the fright can be dealt with not through self-delusional baloney that deters positive action but through genuine change opportunities that mobilize such action
the prism of a core claim of this book: the effectiveness of persuasive messages—in this case, carrying two influence themes that have been commonly used for centuries—
will be drastically affected by the type of opener experienced immediately in advance.
Put people in a wary state of mind via that opener, and, driven by a desire for safety, a popularity-based appeal will soar,
whereas a distinctiveness-based appeal will sink. But use it to put people in an amorous state of“mind, and, driven by a consequent desire to stand out, the reverse will occur.
Research confirms that rather than using cuts judiciously to direct attention solely to the most important facets of their material, TV advertisers have chosen instead to increase indiscriminately and dramatically the overall frequency of scene shifts within their ads by more than 50 percent over the years.
Predictably, viewers end up confused as to the point of the ad and irritated by having their focus whipped around so often and so haphazardly. As a result, even though cut-heavy TV commercials draw more total attention, they produce significantly less memory for the ad’s persuasive claims and significantly less persuasion. It’s easy to understand why: viewers’ attention isn’t fixated on the ads’ best points but is scattered all over the material’s relevant and irrelevant attributes.
To leverage the power of difference when employing these vehicles, persuaders typically resort to a more traditional tactic. They insert novelty into the appeal—that is, something designed to appear distinctive (original or unfamiliar or surprising) which also works well to attract attention.
Indeed, almost anything a persuader can do to set an item apart from competitors has this effect. And as long as the spotlighted item has worth, its allure can leapfrog over that of equally worthy or even more worthy rivals.
adding three models with durable cushions made the Dream stand out as distinct from the other four possibilities on the feature of cushion softness and comfort
—and distinctiveness, as we’ve seen, swings attention to the distinguishing factor, which in this instance led to cushion comfort’s greater perceived importance.
who can fasten an audience’s focus onto the favorable elements of an argument raises the chance that the argument will go unchallenged by opposing points of view, which get locked out of attention as a consequence.
Certain kinds of information do, in fact, combine initial pulling power with staying power. Information about oneself, for example, packs that potent one-two punch
when recipients get a message that is self-relevant because it has been tailored specifically for them (for example, by referencing the recipient’s age, sex, or health history), they are more likely to lend it attention, find it interesting, take it seriously, remember it, and save it for future reference—
all of which leads to greater communication effectiveness, as reflected in arenas as diverse as weight loss, exercise initiation, smoking cessation, and cancer screening.
unfinished tasks are the more memorable, hoarding attention so they can be performed and dispatched successfully.
Once completed, attentional resources are diverted from“the undertaking to other pursuits; but while the initial activity is under way, a heightened level of cognitive focus must be reserved for it
on a task that we feel committed to performing, we will remember all sorts of elements of it better if we have not yet had the chance to finish, because our attention will remain drawn to it.
Second, if we are engaged in such a task and are interrupted or pulled away, we’ll feel a discomforting, gnawing desire to get back to it. That desire—which also pushes us to return to incomplete narratives, unresolved problems, unanswered questions, and unachieved goals—reflects a craving for cognitive closure.
when an important outcome is unknown to people, “they can hardly think of anything else.”
And because, as we know, regular attention to something makes it seem more worthy of attention, the women’s repeated refocusing on those guys made them appear the most attractive.
She never lets herself finish a writing session at the end of a paragraph or even a thought.
She assured me she knows precisely what she wants to say at the end of that last paragraph or thought; she just doesn’t allow herself to say it until the next time
Mystery,Albert Einstein proclaimed as “the most beautiful thing we can experience”
and simultaneously “the source of all true science and art.
the most successful of the pieces each began with a mystery story.
The authors described a state of affairs that seemed perplexing and then invited the reader into the subsequent material as a way of dispatching the enigma
An example is in order. A little-recognized truth I often try to convey to various audiences is that, in contests of persuasion, counterarguments are typically more powerful than arguments.
This superiority emerges especially when a counterclaim does more than refute a rival’s claim by showing it to be mistaken or misdirected in the particular instance, but does so instead by showing the rival communicator to be an untrustworthy source of information, generally.
Whereas descriptions require notice and questions require answers, mysteries require explanations. When I challenged students to engage in the process of providing explanations to account for states of affairs that otherwise wouldn’t make sense, their test scores went up.
Why? Because that process also provided them the best chance to understand the lecture material in a meaningful and enduring way.
demonstrating that an opponent’s argument is not to be believed because its maker is misinformed on the topic will usually succeed on that singular issue.
But a counterargument that undermines an opponent’s argument by showing him or her to be dishonest in the matter will normally win that battle plus future battles with the opponent.
the brain’s operations arise fundamentally and inescapably from raw associations.
Just as amino acids can be called the building blocks of life, associations can be called the building blocks of thought.
For issues of persuasion, this assertion seems to me groundbreaking. No longer should we think of language as primarily a mechanism of conveyance; as a means for delivering a communicator’s conception of reality.
Instead, we should think of language as primarily a mechanism of influence; as a means for inducing recipients to share that conception or, at least, to act in accord with it
We achieve the goal by employing language that orients recipients to those regions of reality
stocked with associations favorable to our view.
the linguistic devices that researchers have identified for driving attention to one or another aspect of reality. They include verbs that draw attention to concrete features of a situation, adjectives that pull one’s focus onto the traits (versus
behaviors) of others, personal pronouns that highlight existing relationships, metaphors that frame a state of affairs so that it is interpreted in a singular way, or just particular wordings that link to targeted thoughts.
“Incidental (but Not Accidental) Exposure to Words
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word.
—Joseph Conrad
Multiple studies have shown that subtly exposing individuals to words that connote achievement (win, attain, succeed, master)
increases their performance on an assigned task and more than doubles their willingness to keep working at it.
“If you want to change the world, change the metaphor.
—Joseph Campbell
It appears, then, that initial incidental exposure either to simple words or simple images can have a pre-suasive impact on later
actions that are merely associated with the words or images.
Since Aristotle’s Poetics (circa 350 BCE), communicators have been advised to use metaphor to get their points across.
They’ve been told that an effective way to convey a somewhat elusive concept to an audience is to describe it in terms of another concept that the audience can recognize readily.
the main function of language is not to express or describe but to influence—something it does by channeling recipients to sectors of reality pre-loaded with a set of mental associations favorable to the communicator’s view.
If so, we can see why metaphor, which directs people to think of one thing in terms of their associations to a selected other thing, possesses great potential as a linguistic device.
in any public pronouncements on the topic, she should portray the crime surge as a wild beast rampaging through the city that must be stopped. Why?
Because to bring a wild beast under control, it’s necessary to catch and cage it. In the minds of her audiences, these natural associations to the proper handling of rampaging “mals will transfer to the proper handling of crime and criminals.
in all her public pronouncements on the topic, the candidate should portray the crime surge as a spreading virus infecting the city that must be stopped.
Why? Because to bring a virus under control, it’s necessary to remove the unhealthy conditions that allow it to breed and spread. These disease-related associations should now frame the way citizens think about how best to deal with their crime problem.
According to chroniclers of that success, he never pressured reluctant prospects into a sale. Instead, he employed a light (and enlightened) touch that led them smoothly toward a purchase
Mr. Feldman was a master of metaphor. In his portrayal of life’s end, for instance, people didn’t die, they “walked out” of life—a characterization that benefitted from associations to a breach in one’s family responsibilities that would need to be filled. He was then quick to depict life insurance as the (metaphorically aligned) solution: “When you walk out,” he would say, “your insurance money walks in.” When exposed to this metaphoric lesson in the moral responsibility of buying life insurance, many a customer straightened up and walked right
he concept pre-loaded with associations most damaging to immediate assessments and future dealings is
untrustworthiness, along with its concomitants, such as lying and cheating.”
Therefore, anything that is self-connected (or can be made to seem self-connected) gets an immediate lift in our eyes
Sometimes the connections can be trivial but can still serve as springboards to persuasive success.
I Am We, and We Are Number One. When considering the persuasive implications of implicit egoism, there’s an important qualification to be taken into account.
The overvalued self isn’t always the personal self. It can also be the social self—the one framed not by the characteristics of the individual but by the characteristics of that individual’s group.
There is much positivity associated with getting something with ease, but in a particular way. When we grasp something fluently—that is, we can picture or process it quickly and effortlessly—
we not only like that thing more but also think it is more valid and worthwhile. For this reason, poetry possessing rhyme and regular meter evokes something more than greater favor from readers; it is also evokes perceptions of higher aesthetic value
Tellingly, when people can process something with cognitive ease, they experience increased neuronal activity in the muscles of their face that produce a smile.
On the flip side, if it’s difficult to process something, observers tend to dislike that experience and, accordingly, that thing.
they’ve taken a piece of psychological information—that background cues in one’s physical environment can guide how one thinks there—
and employed it to generate a desired effect.
It’s easy for some feature of the outside world to redirect our attention to an inner feature—to a particular attitude, belief, trait, memory, or sensation.
As I’ve reported, there are certain consequential effects of such a shift in focus: within that moment, we are more likely to grant the focal factor importance, assign it causal status, and undertake action associated with it.
